Wednesday 3 February 2010

Feeling out of practice.

With what? I hear you cry… Well, keeping my blog updated for starters! So indeed, a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to anyone that might be reading this! The last couple of months have been pretty manic and I’ve got a lot of jobs to get finished around the house before our next little one arrives (the due date being 19th April). I’m working hard though, whilst generally running around like a headless chicken. Mrs D just spent the week at the in-laws with Miss D, giving me a chance to get ahead with the main project – refitting our bathroom.
Much progress was made although at the moment we have no bath, no plaster on most of the walls, and a “to do” list as long as both my arms. I loved Miss D’s reaction when she first saw it – “Mummy, what happened to the bathroom? Daddy broke it!”. I love that toddler black & white kind of logic, I smiled and told her that “Daddy will fix it” as he does with all the toys and books that Miss D manages to damage or break!

I’m feeling a bit out of practice with the parenting too, which sounds silly as it was only a week on my own but whilst the ladies were away, Miss D’s daily routine was changed a little to compensate for the fact that her New Year’s resolution seems to be “I’m not having an afternoon nap anymore” :(
So, rather that spending a couple of hours running up and down the stairs putting her back into bed for that illusive afternoon snooze, my very clever and very lovely wife decided to bring mealtimes forward a bit and put her up to bed earlier in the evening. I guess I’ve been a little blinded by the “she must have her afternoon nap” mantra and hadn’t really considered the alternatives.

So I’ll stick my neck out once again and say that so far, things are going pretty well. Meal times have been brought forward by an hour, as has bedtime. Okay, a downside is that I don’t get a break in the afternoon to catch up with a few DIY jobs or to just chill out for a bit, but that’s no big deal. Now, when Mrs D gets home from work, Miss D has already eaten dinner and they can play for a bit, then we pack her off to bed and get to eat our dinner at a reasonable hour and have a bit more of an evening together. Miss D’s legendary late-afternoon tantrums haven’t been an issue either – clever mummy!

Still, after a break of just one week and with daddy back at the helm, Miss D has so far developed a nappy rash out of nowhere (she was fine last week, typical!), threw up her yoghurt last night for no apparent reason (she loves yoghurt) and woke up this morning with a runny nose (as did I). So much for 2 year olds testing the boundaries, I think somebody up there is testing me…

It’s not a problem though, I’ll keep on keepin’ on, and always in the back of my mind is the fact that soon there will be another little one to look after and things are only going to get more complicated from then on. I’m looking forward to it immensely though, Miss D got a baby doll and crib for Christmas so she’s been practicing how to feed and hold the baby, it seems to be very instinctive behaviour with minimal input from us and she’s very gentle and caring with the doll, I hope this is a good sign of things to come.

I’d better sign off now, I’m going to take Miss D for a walk to the shops to get a big box of tissues for our runny noses!

2 comments:

  1. Hey there, pleased to see you updating your blog - I like it as we are in a similar situation - I work and Hackney_bloke looks after HackneyChild. Congrats on the new arrival, we also are expecting one on 29 March. What will happen to your childcare arrangements then if that is not too rude a question?

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  2. Hello! The plan's simple (on paper), Mrs D will take a break from work for 6 months on maternity leave and I'll find work for 6 months to pay the bills (statutory maternity pay sucks). She'll go back to work afterwards and I'm back to being a stay-at-home dad... That's the plan anyway!

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